"Are you ready to build a guild?"
The question hangs in the room for a few seconds.
Not because they didn’t understand it. Just the opposite. That’s exactly the problem. Up until this mont, everything could still be treated as an absurd chain of decisions made too fast: bets, contracts, a factory, Zhang Xi, the Silver Fangs, the LDP Potion, the cleaning of OXI ducts. But the word guild carries a different weight.
A guild isn’t just a group.
It’s a banner.
It’s a na.
It’s responsibility registered before the world and the Ocean’s Law.
Veric looks at the Plates on the table, then at , then at the door Zhang Xi walked out of.
"Before anything else... please tell you’ve already thought about the na."
I stay quiet for half a second, and it’s enough to drain the color from his face.
"Oh, no. Sands... no. Don’t tell you’re trying to build a million-Scale operation, ss with Azure Pri’s OXI ducts, negotiate with the Silver Fangs, and stand against Sharma, Deepwarden of whatever hell, without a na."
Oliver crosses his arms, leaning against the wall.
"A bad na can kill a business before the first product."
"Thank you, big guy." Veric points at him. "At least soone here understands the basics of civilization and administration."
Rhayne, who until now has been watching the Plates in silence, lifts her face.
"The na has to be beautiful."
Veric turns to her.
"Beautiful?"
"Yes. If it’s sothing people are going to follow, it has to sound like sothing they’d want to reach."
I rest my elbows on the table and lace my fingers, letting them argue for a few seconds. It’s useful. Not for their creativity, necessarily, but for the instinctive reaction. The na has to pass through the ears of different people. A spoiled prince with a sense for politics, a broken girl trying to believe in a future, and a pragmatic man who asures everything by usefulness.
"How about Iron Tide?" Veric suggests.
"Sounds like a rcenary guild compensating for sothing," Oliver answers.
"Black Harbor?"
"Even worse."
"Silver Ark?"
"Sounds like a fake subsidiary of the Silver Fangs," I say.
Veric clicks his tongue.
"You criticize a lot for soone who didn’t bring an option."
Rhayne tilts her head a little, thinking for real.
"What if it’s sothing with ’hope’?"
I go still.
The word touches an uncomfortable place inside .
Hope.
Codex of Hope.
The golden light. The voices. Cassio falling. My own flesh splitting open to pay the price of a technique I still don’t fully understand. And underneath all of it, the mory I never asked to keep: my own body, armless on the floor of the Aion Sanctuary, dying in the na of "hope."
I shake my head slowly.
"No."
Rhayne realizes she’s brushed against sothing and doesn’t push.
"Hope is too big a word to use as a shop sign," I say, trying to keep my tone light enough not to turn it into a confession. "If you put hope in the na, people expect you to deliver miracles. We don’t have that right yet."
Veric watches for a mont, less playful than before.
"So what, then?"
I look at the empty LDP vial on the table, then out the window, where tired and lifeless faces fight their way through one more day, and finally at each of them.
The room feels too small for what we’re trying to do.
Outside, Azure Pri carries on living. Carriages, footsteps, voices, rchants, students, Divers coming back from the trenches, and people laughing as if the world weren’t rotting beneath its own foundations. Sowhere out there, children freshly dropped into Thirstfall are probably learning that no one is coming for them. Sowhere else, a wounded Diver is swallowing cheap, corrosive OXI because it’s that or die hollow in the trench. And above all of them, the Deepwarden keeps growing in the future like a dark tide no one can see yet.
But I can.
That’s my own private hell.
"Safe Harbor," I say.
Veric frowns.
"Safe Harbor?"
"Yes."
He opens his mouth, probably to complain that it sounds too soft, but Rhayne speaks first.
"I like it."
Her voice cos out low.
Oliver doesn’t say anything right away. He just keeps watching , as if waiting for the part I haven’t said yet.
Veric leans back in his seat.
"It doesn’t sound threatening."
"It’s not supposed to."
He arches an eyebrow.
"You want to found a non-threatening guild?"
"I want to found a guild people can say out loud without feeling like they’re signing their own death sentence."
The silence shifts its weight.
I lean forward a little, letting my voice settle firr.
"Thirstfall teaches one thing very fast: survive alone or sink quietly. That’s how this world breaks people. It isolates you, then sells you a rope with interest. It sells tampered healing. It sells protection that turns into a collar. It sells debt under the na of opportunity. And what cos ho to your family is a broken human being who knows that in ninety-six hours he goes back to that hell."
Rhayne lowers her eyes.
Veric stops joking.
Oliver stays motionless.
"The Deepwarden doesn’t win just because it’s strong," I continue. "It wins because people spend too long believing there’s nowhere else to go. That every shelter charges a hidden price. That every open hand is waiting for the right mont to close around your throat. It sells the false safety of greed."
My hand touches the empty LDP vial.
"I don’t want to build just a factory. Or just a guild to launder money, sell potions, and pretend we’re smaller than we really are. That can be part of the road. It can’t be the destination."
The words start coming out more slowly. Not from hesitation, but because I need to choose each one without turning it into a cheap promise. Today I’ve genuinely chosen these people to walk with . One last vote of confidence.
I go on.
"Safe Harbor is simple. Maybe too simple. But that’s exactly why it works. A safe harbor doesn’t need to scream that it’s powerful. It needs to exist when the sea tries to swallow soone."
Rhayne looks at again.
There’s sothing fragile in her expression. Not weakness. Maybe recognition.
"For the Divers who co back from the trenches drained, we sell decent OXI. For the kids Zhang Xi tries to protect, maybe one day we offer work, a roof, and a way not to be devoured in the first month. And for the ones the Deepwarden would turn into sothing disposable or corrupt... we beco the shore they never thought existed in this churning sea."
Veric lets the air out through his nose, but he doesn’t mock.
"This is starting to sound dangerous."
"Because it is."
I look directly at him.
"Just not the way the others expect. A guild called Bloody Scar scares people for a day. A guild called Safe Harbor bothers them forever, if it starts keeping what it promises."
Oliver finally speaks.
"Because people run to a safe harbor when the storm cos, when the war starts, or when they find a ho. And a ho is a safe harbor."
I nod.
"And when enough people run to the sa place, that place stops being a shelter. It becos territory."
The room goes quiet again.
This ti the silence doesn’t feel like doubt.
It feels like a foundation.
Veric runs a hand through his hair, looking at the Plates as if they’ve just gotten heavier.
"You realize this na is going to make you look like a better person than you actually are, right?"
I answer with a half smile. "Excellent marketing strategy."
He shoots sothing back. Rhayne laughs quietly, and the tension eases just enough for the room to breathe again.
"Safe Harbor Guild," she repeats, testing the sound. "It feels... warm."
"Warm?" Veric asks.
"Like a lit candle on a nightstand when it’s raining."
No one mocks her. Not even Veric.
Maybe because, for a second, all of us can picture exactly what she ans. Or maybe because the comparison sounds so much like Lola that I can almost believe it was her who said it.
Oliver pushes off the wall and brings his elbows to the table.
"We have much bigger problems. A guild isn’t just a na."
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